Gerald Warner is an author, broadcaster, columnist and polemical commentator who writes about politics, religion, history, culture and society in general.

Alan Johnson, the Home Secretary, claims that civil servants do “difficult and sometimes dangerous jobs” that justify their receipt of millions of pounds in bonuses. Sometimes, he claims, these jobs entail going into the front line in Afghanistan to support our troops who, of course, receive no bonuses at all.

Have we stumbled upon a secret war that has previously eluded even the most astute investigative journalists? Since 50,000 civil servants will receive bonuses this year, that would seem to suggest they have served in Iraq and Afghanistan in heroic numbers, dwarfing our actual troops presence in those theatres. That would be in line with Ministry of Defence practice, since the MoD houses 85,000 civil servants – twice the number of active British soldiers.

Since the total paid out in bonuses to civil servants since 2003, when the Iraq war started, amounts to £287 million, one can only deduce there has been a vast amount of John Buchan-style heroism being covertly performed, in the best understated British tradition, by civil servants slipping out of Whitehall to do a Sandy Arbuthnot by participating in the Great Game amid the inhospitable mountains of Afghanistan. In that event, mere bonuses are hardly an adequate reward. It is time to honour these unsung heroes by publishing their hitherto modestly concealed casualty figures.

We know that 232 British soldiers have been killed and more than 1,000 seriously injured, without any question of bonuses. Since the bowler-hat brigade outnumbers them and has been taking such extravagant risks as to earn £287 million in bonuses, their casualty rates must presumably be shocking. So, it is time the MoD unveiled them to the world so that the nation can express its appreciation more appropriately than by a covert cheque in their pay packets.

Of course, one must not underestimate the hazards encountered by civil servants doing “difficult and sometimes dangerous jobs” even on the home front. To enter the inner sanctum of 10 Downing Street at an inopportune moment is to court the risk of being struck by a mobile telephone in full flight. Anecdotal evidence also suggests some very nasty cases, among chair-bound civil servants, of haemorrhoids contracted in the line of duty. They also serve who only sit and wait…